Another site destruction deck, huh? Site destruction decks have a bad rep because Magic-brain has told you it won't work in Sorcery. After all, you destroy a site then next turn they just draw another one. You destroy another site and they just draw another one. Again and again. A temporary stalemate until they eventually blow you out with all their minions that you left on the realm because you were busy wasting your time on their sites. However, I have an alternative theory:
Fill the [[Rubble]]. If you fill the that you created from destroying their site, you close off the options your opponent has to keep playing sites. If you do it right, they'll have no ability to play more sites and you'll control the entire realm. This is why site destruction is different in Sorcery than it is in Magic. You can contest the realm.
This doesn't solve the fact that if you're busy killing sites while they're busy playing minions, you'll lose. However, I'm asking you to shift your mindset a little bit with this deck: The primary goal isn't about site destruction, it's about locking them out of the realm. Then, that's when we focus on destroying the sites they do have in order to completely lock them out from the rest of the game.
Phase 1
Your strategy is to race, and you're racing specifically to lock your opponent out of the realm. This means that we care deeply about playing extra sites and you do this with , , and . In fact, you should care so deeply about this, that you probably want to mulligan anything else with the hopes of finding one of these. If you're still not finding anything, mask up and start searching harder. Utilize what you have to try to cut them off and then you can pivot to phase 2.
Phase 2
You're done racing and now you're going to try to pivot to controlling the mid-game. This means controlling the minions on the board with spells like , , and , and site destruction with , , and . You also want to be building up card advantage, which you can start doing by masking up . This will allow you to play sites while still drawing spells. Once you're done playing sites with , switch to and begin getting as much card advantage as you can.
Phase 3
Now you need to close out the game. Hopefully, your opponent sees the writing on the wall and concedes. But sometimes the salt gets the best of people and they hold out hope that their deck will provide a miracle. Mask up and begin flooding the realm with minions. There are also a couple heavy hitters in the deck like which will help speed things up, but slow and steady is fine here. If minions aren't doing the trick, mask up and start using the tap ability to make your opponent lose 2 life.
Some of you might be wondering why we're not just using or and building a more traditional site destruction build. The answer is simple, I think this is more versatile.
gives us the ability to switch to those avatars when it makes sense and get some extra value, but it also allows us to build a more traditionally tuned deck and not have to have filler cards to compensate for their weaknesses (i.e., movement or site restrictions).
Learning how to play is complicated. But when you master it, you'll feel like you're a chess grandmaster with a vibrating device inside of you, giving you all of the right moves to make.
🧂 Use , , and to lock minions into a or The spider will survive and be burrowed under the . Also s are amazing for , again because they survive the destruction and usually go under the radar beforehand.
🧂 doesn't say adjacent to your other sites... it can be played to any void square. Use it to cut your opponent off.
🧂I don't claim this deck is good. It's a work in progress and I'm trying to make it something I enjoy playing.
🧂 IMPORTANT: The "Establish your Domain" rule only counts for turn 1 of the game. After that an avatar can play a site either adjacent to an existing one they own or as close as possible to their avatar if no other sites exist. This means that if you destroy all their sites but there's still some empty voids around the realm... they can play a site on the other side of the realm. So don't cut them off entirely until you've already filled up the realm yourself, or you could end up with a minion on your doorstep.